One of the common SEO questions we see is related to the “Pragma  No-Cache” metatag. Many webmasters and site owners may notice this in their source code and assume that it has an effect on search engine rankings, or is keeping Google from indexing pages. In fact, this tag has no effect on search engines, though it is generally unnecessary and can usually be deleted.

The “Pragma: No-Cache” tag is actually intended to keep browsers (and some proxies) from caching content on your web page. If you have a site where content is updated regularly, or if you are testing changes in real time, you don’t want the cached version of the page to be displayed. Depending on the situation, a browser/server may choose to ignore this command, so it is not a guarantee that someone will get a new page load every time.

One common issue in the SEO world is that people will confuse the Pragma No-Cache tag with the Robots No-Cache tag when looking at source code. In many cases people are wondering why pages aren’t being indexed, check the source code for “no-cache,” and see the Pragma tag in place. While this tag is something of an anachronism in the days of cheap bandwidth and faster download speeds, it is not harmful to search engine rankings. If anything, it could be a clear signal that the user should do a review of site functionality and dated metatags, since a Pragma No-Cache tag may be indicative of an older design that may not function optimally in the latest versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, and any one of the mobile platforms that will dominate the browsing world in the coming years.

If you’ve been reading any print media lately, you may have noticed some unusual looking square barcodes embedded within ads. Known as QR codes, they are essentially paper-based hyperlinks that can be translated by smartphones, and lead to websites. Many newspaper advertisers, like restaurants, use them to offer special deals that are not available to the average reader.

 The great thing about QR codes is that you don’t have to be an engineer to build them if you want to put them in ads. There are several QR code generators out there online, and there are QR code makers in the form of software. Because the QR code is built through a third party, it works equally well with Android and iPhone apps. For the user, it may be necessary to download a specific QR code reading application. There are even some alternative versions of the QR code, so it may be necessary to have more than one scanning app if you are the one doing the reading.

Can QR codes be used in link building? Right now, the jury is out, but this may be something to consider if you have content that can be accessed on mobile devices. If you generate QR codes by way of websites or software, the search engines may be looking through lists of these links to discover pages they haven’t found before. Therefore, the links themselves may not pass the same type of value as a text link, but they would still be useful in getting pages noticed. As always, there can be secondary natural link building if you use a WR code to get someone to look at your product pages, and then they use your actual link in blogs or other postings.

Until the use of QR codes becomes a bit more ubiquitous, the SEO and SEM implications for using them are going to be up in the air. Nonetheless, it is still a good idea to keep an eye on this segment of technology, since the way people use the internet on smartphones is going to create a new emphasis on features that were impossible to offer users who were tethered to a computer. The game-changing reality of the mobile internet is going to have a radical impact on how sites make money in the future, and QR codes may very well be the bridge between print and digital that keeps your brand in the viewer’s mind.

If you publish a blog on Wordpress, Blogger, or other platforms, then it probably didn’t take long to discover that your content can end up on all kinds of websites. Luckily, search engines are pretty good at crediting the content to your own site, so you enjoy the benefits of improved search engine traffic in addition to the improved credibility (and exposure) that your blog creates. From an SEO standpoint, there are some minor advantages to this wholesale duplication.

Most content scraping is done by offshore sites and content aggregators, which essentially copy everything that gets published through blog platforms. These sites simply add your blog entry to millions of other pages on various sites, and then automatically place advertising next to the content. They get paid every time someone clicks on an ad, and the payment is anywhere from a penny to a few dollars. (Most of the time it is a few cents.)  The scale of this content scraping is quite large, so these sites can make a profit even if a very small percentage of their pages are visited. Even though search engines prefer original content, and give it greater prominence, there is obviously enough traffic generated from large-scale copying to pay for hosting and overhead.

What can you do to prevent copying? Not much. Since the site owners are offshore, and the ownership of servers and hosting is pretty murky, you (the blogger) are probably not in a position to challenge someone operating anonymously under some foreign country’s lenient copyright laws. However, you can improve your link popularity, albeit from lower-end sites, by making sure that you embed links into your content that point back to your own site. Despite the fact that these sites have minimal quality, they are at least indexed by Google, and therefore the link popularity coming back from these sites has a certain amount of value. As site content and links age in search engines, you might as well reclaim some of the credibility that comes from getting your content scraped without permission.

Naturally, not every site that copies or quotes your content is on the dark side of SEO, and in this case peppering your links into content can be beneficial. If your blog is topical, offers value to an average person, or answers common questions, it can get referenced by people who are using your work as an authoritative argument. If you get quoted by these users, and your link remains intact, you are getting even more link value. Therefore, it pays to put at least one link in your blog that either references your homepage or a related topic. Although there is no substitute for good high-powered link building, there can be an aggregate benefit to getting picked up by the otherwise spammy world of content scraping and aggregation.